Construction is still underway in West Point where the new KIA auto plant is scheduled to open later this year.

While much of the rest of the country remains mired in the depressing gray of recession, this rural town of fewer than 3,500 people on the Georgia-Alabama border, about 80 miles southwest of Atlanta, has somehow managed to draw the winning ticket in the nation’s economic lottery.

A new Kia Motors Corporation automobile manufacturing plant is opening here this year, an event that many residents of this former mill town, where life had slowly been ebbing away, can only describe as heaven-sent.

“We’re the only place in the nation that is fixing to put between 7 and 10,000 manufacturing jobs online,” said Mayor Drew Ferguson IV, a 42-year-old dentist who is charged with managing the town’s growth. “We are the place that has the light at the end of the tunnel.”

Small light that cost [Foreign automakers have flocked to the South, drawn by huge incentives offered by state officials, cheaper labor costs and the nonunion environment. (In the case of Kia, which is based in South Korea, state and local officials doled out some $400 million in tax breaks and other incentives.)], and that is non-union. Where did the 400 million dollars come from? Lowered taxes. Where will the $400 million hole

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